Gardens in front yards are OK

Talk about misplaced values.  So you don't have much of a yard and your house faces south, or like TPP almost the whole back yard is shaded.  So what do you do?  Well, you plant your vegetable garden in the front, but then  you are informed that this violates an appearance code in your town.  However, the good news side of this situation is that Miami Shores which sounds like a chi-chi sort of place, changed its mind and now allows vegetable gardens in front yards.  Great cheers for this glimmer of gardening enlightenment.  
Where did the idea come from that a monoculture of grass is aesthetically pleasing, but a hedge row of zucchini squash isn't?  Now TPP thinks that such gardens must be well attended and not allowed to turn into an unkept mess.  Having grown up in a part of New York where citizens of Italian background were plentiful, many cultivated favorite vegetables using their entire yard.  And they were lovely and well cared for.  TPP has considered front yard vegetable gardening, but there are already a lot of plants there, and mostly sun remains a bit of a limiting commodity.  
One of our neighbors just died, too young, after being ill for a long time, but his yard was rather small, and eventually all the lawn disappeared into a diversity of garden plants; OK no vegetables, but also no grass.  The only difference would be whether you cultivate a tomato or two versus a magnolia.  Tough choice.   

Fall Lawn Care Advice

As many readers of the Phytophactor know, he is an expert on ecological lawn care (see here and here to review his perspective), so imagine the delight when a newly discovered blog begins with these statements. If you were on a quest to rid the world of excess turf grass, the front lawn would be a good place to start. Front lawns dominated by grass are, for the most part, wasted space.
How very true, although it they had been following my advice, it would be lawn not turf grass, a dead giveaway term of a hort education, so even this guy has something to learn. Front lawns, especially front lawns of grass, are such a waste! The idea of expanses of lawn in front of the family manse wasn't such a bad idea when a flock of sheep was employed to keep it manicured, but that's hardly practical when the local berg won't even allow chickens or rabbits. Now it's hard to know which is sillier, those little tiny patches of grass slightly larger than a door mat you find in inner city neighborhoods or the acres of sense numbing, diagonally-mowed grass of the 'burbs. At present lawn occupies about 30% of the area of the Phactor's front garden. Our quest to minimize lawn is aided and abetted by large trees that make a grassy lawn nearly impossible, but even in old established urban neighborhoods such as ours too many people attempt the impossible either out of laziness, based on the grass is easier myth, or ignorance of alternatives, or both (remember my mention of an Ediot neighbor who ripped out all of the landscaping and planted grass? An update on him will be forthcoming.).
So my advice for lawn care this fall is simple: dig it up, this is an excellent time to plant something new. Violate those stupid ordinances that prevent you from gardening your land in view of others! Make your act of civil disobedience create a visual and actual oasis of greenery. The image provided is of the 4th house west of the Phactors, the smallest lot in the entire neighborhood, and not a blade of grass to be seen anywhere. Please be kind because at this time of year their garden lawn is rather over grown, suffering from the heat and drought, and health has prevented them from maintaining control. But the concept that lawn/grass is not at all necessary is exactly the point illustrated. Stop wasting space on lawn!